“…dizzying, funny and wrenching…fresh, shocking, and painful as an open wound…gets in your heart and mind like an off-stage sob.” —Georgetowner. “…issues of chance and causality, fate and choice, free will versus predetermination—all unabashedly expressed…[with] unexpected humor and touches of whimsical theatricality…” —Houston Chronicle. "…clever, sharply drawn…very funny…” —Washington Post. “…engaging…funny…profoundly loving…” —Texas Triangle Magazine.

In Recent Tragic Events, which draws on the September 11 terrorist attacks for inspiration, playwright Craig Wright concerns himself with the existential questions that plague so many of us these days: What choices have we, ultimately, when chance is so powerful a player in our lives?

The story upon which he hangs his question is fairly pedestrian -- a blind date gone awry -- except that he sets it on Sept. 12, 2001, and gives one of the romantic hopefuls a twin sister who may or may not have been in the World Trade Center the morning before.

Rather than shape this material into a tear-jerker, however, Wright sketches it as screwball romance and peoples it with a clutch of oddballs -- the spaced out, chatty neighbor and his Sphinx-like girlfriend, the uptight suitor and the free-spirited young thing he is attempting, rather clumsily, to woo. But Wright also tells his story with verve and wit, showcasing a quirky sensibility and a talent for crackling dialogue that rescue him from his own excesses.

The story involves a bookstore manager named Andrew who arrives on the doorstep of Waverly for a blind date set up by a mutually despised acquaintance. Waverly is distracted by news that her twin sister Wendy, a student in New York, has not been heard from in several days. As the evening unfolds, Waverly and Andrew become aware that they seem connected by a series of bizarre coincidences, not the least of which is that Andrew believes he may have met Wendy on a recent trip to New York. As Waverly awaits word from home, the "date" devolves into a beer-soaked gabfest with the neighbor, his girlfriend, and a surprise guest -- Joyce Carol Oates, who is Waverly's great aunt.

Oates, as most avid fiction readers know, is one of the most prolific writers of our time, cranking out novels, short stories, essays, and plays with manic speed. Wright makes much of this fact in an extended joke in which Waverly, who has all of Oates's books on her shelf, but never read one, begs Andrew for a crash course as her great-aunt comes a-tapping at the door.

CRAIG WRIGHT

Born in 1965 in Puerto Rico, Wright attended St. John's University in Minneapolis, Minnesota and went on to earn a Masters of Divinity degree from the United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. He currently lives in Los Angeles.

Wright is best known for his plays: The Pavilion, Recent Tragic Events, Orange Flower Water, Melissa Arctic, Main Street, Molly's Delicious and numerous others. Grace premiered in fall 2005 at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington, D.C..

Wright has received awards and award nominations for his work, including the Jerome Fellowship at age 21 and apprenticeships in playwriting from the McKnight Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

His play The Pavilion, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, the American Theatre Critics' Association Best New Play Award and a 2005-2006 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play and has had over 40 productions since its premiere in 2000; It is one of four set in Pine City, Minnesota. His Recent Tragic Events won an ATCA Best New Play Citation Award in 2002.

His television writing debut was on the 2001 HBO series, Six Feet Under, joining the writing staff during the 2003 season. During that season, he wrote "Twilight," for which he was nominated for an Emmy and "Timing and Space"; he penned 3 more episodes of Six Feet Under and co-wrote one with co-executive producer, Jill Soloway. In 2004, he was appointed Executive Story Editor with Nancy Oliver. In 2005, he became a producer for the fifth and final season.

In 2005, he signed a 2 year deal with Touchstone Television and served as a supervising producer during the 2005-2006 season of ABCs Lost until midseason after co-writing two episodes. Wright then became a Co-Executive Producer and writer on ABC's Brothers & Sisters.